The True Self Versus Superficial Personality Levels -- Neurosis Versus Sin -- Split Concepts Creating Confusion

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless every one of you and your dear ones. Blessed is this lecture.

The more you work on this Path and comprehend the nature of this work, the more you will understand that the aim is to find your real self, your true being, underneath layers upon layers of yourself which at first glance seem to be your personality. But the more you proceed, the more do you realize that it is not the real self, but artificial trends and traits that you cultivated for so long that they have become your second nature and therefore appear as you. When we think of the real self, we know that it stands for the divine spark. Your unconscious concept of it is that this real self is so lofty and so holy that it is utterly foreign to the you with which you are familiar. This not only frightens you a little, but it also discourages you. This is one of the greatest stumbling blocks in finding your real self. The real self is actually much nearer to you than you realize. In fact, there are areas in your life where you do act out of your real self. But you do not know it because it is such a natural process. As yet, you cannot distinguish between this kind of action and the action coming forth from the superficial layers.

You assume that the real, divine self will appear in the form of a rigid perfection with a standardized pattern. This false image stands in your way more than your imperfections. Your misconception about divine perfection leads you to rigidity and compulsion on the one hand, and to rebellion against it on the other. You ignore the vital truth that imperfection can lead to and at present even be perfection. For perfection in the real, divine sense is relative and depends on one's attitude toward oneself and one's acts than on one perfect act as such. In other words, it is never what you do but how you do it. The act that is deemed right by the whole world and in accordance with all spiritual laws may be dishonest. You may be divided in it and you may have committed it out of fear and out of compulsion, and therefore out of the greed to receive love and approval. Then it is not your real self that acts, regardless of how perfect the outer action may seem. On the other hand, your deed may be condemned by the world. It may be contradictory to the final finished product of perfection. But in your present state it is not just unavoidable but even necessary. You show yourself as you are, in accordance with your nature, your inner way of growth. If you are at one with yourself about it, fully assuming responsibility for it, ready to pay the consequences, then this imperfect act is more perfect, more according to your truth than the former. This is not easy to understand and it requires a certain amount of insight and progress. It certainly cannot be approached lightly and irresponsibly. Childish willfulness, always wanting to get something for nothing, should not be confused with it.

Now let us try, difficult as this is in words, to determine the difference between your genuine self, your true self and the superficial self. When you act out of your real self, then you are in complete unity with yourself. There is no doubt, there is no confusion, there is no anxiety, there is no tension. You are not concerned with the appearance of the act in the eyes of others. Nor are you concerned with the principle or the rule. You are concerned, however, with the effect of your action on others and on yourself -- in other words, with the consequences -- and you choose this alternative because, even though you recognize its imperfections, it seems less imperfect to you than another alternative. It corresponds to your innermost nature. This does not apply to destructive actions of a crass nature.

On this Path you also learn to analyze what is really destructive and what is not. Often you overlook this consideration completely because you are so conditioned to accept ready-made rules. The rules stand in front of you, blocking the real issue, blinding you to the factors behind the rules. These factors may or may not be the contrary of the stiff rule. As long as you do not have the courage to examine the issues, while forgetting the rule, then you cannot come into selfhood. You cannot develop true self-confidence, to be gained in no other way. For this procedure requires courage because you take the consequences upon yourself. It takes courage because you cut the bond of dependency on rules and on regulations, and thus on public approval. It is the courage to make a mistake, if necessary. And it is wisdom because you know that the mistake itself is not so important, but rather your attitude toward it is.

Many of my friends have already found some of these aspects. They have begun to act and to react according to this truth. But they still overlook other areas of their life where this recognition has not yet penetrated. The farther you proceed on this road, the more you will become aware of all this. At this time this subject needs to be stressed, for the mind tends to forget. For those of you who have come across this vital insight, it is something to meditate upon.

The superficial self may commit an act which is right by all known standards. Yet you feel confused. There is anxiety in you because of it. On the other hand, the opposite course is clearly destructive, and although you may wish to do it, you prevent yourself from doing it because you do not wish to bring harm to others. Therefore, you are divided. This indicates that both alternatives you face come from the view of the superficial self. This may also hold true when two alternatives, which seem neither particularly constructive nor especially destructive, leave you equally dissatisfied. In either case, you are confused because your real self is covered, and therefore all the alternatives at your disposal come from the outer layers.

Any way you turn, the alternative is always between your childish selfwill and the rigid rule or principle. The principle, incidentally, may even be one of your own making and does not necessarily conform to public opinion. These two alternatives leave you utterly dissatisfied. You run around in circles and you cannot find the way out because you concentrate on the outcome and the act, believeving that one must be right and the other wrong, while you feel that both are wrong as far as your peace with it is concerned. Each alternative would be dishonest in its own way. The one because the greedy child wants to grab, the other because it simply conforms and obeys, rather than acting out of conviction.

When you are in a crisis -- and therefore in confusion -- then it means that you find yourself in such a predicament. The confusion is all the greater when you are not clearly aware of these issues. The first step is to clarify the issue as concisely as possible. Even before you can resolve this conflict, because you have not as yet found the way out, you will find relief because now at least you clearly see what it is all about.

When I speak of actions, I do not mean only outer deeds. All thoughts, all emotions, all attitudes, all inner decisions, and all inner behavior patterns are also actions. Actions coming from the outer self always put you into a trap. As I have just indicated, no alternative in sight offers a real solution. One may be outwardly right, while feeling wrong and leaving you confused, unhappy, and doubtful. Or, both alternatives may be equally dissatisfying for all concerned. Therefore, you feel helpless. You hope for and you expect a solution that life might offer because you cannot cope with the issue. This helplessness and this weakness is a sign that we are dealing with the immature and distorted part of the personality. Where you are mature and whole, you will never be dependent on outer circumstances. You can cope with the situation, and even though a certain course may be difficult, you are fully at peace with yourself.

It takes considerable progress in this work and the understanding of certain conflicts and distortions in you before you come face to face with this issue where you in particular feel helplessly trapped because you see only two dissatisfying alternatives, and you choose one because it seems the lesser evil. It is only natural that such a situation creates tension, anxiety, hostility, and discontent. You may occasionally succeed in repressing these emotions, but with the result that they will come out in the most devastating way when you least desire it, and when you are no longer aware as to why you really feel so unpleasant. Before you choose, you may go through stages of battling with yourself. You try to find a solution by thinking processes, by intellectual deliberations applying to the outer situation. But in this way, no matter how much wisdom and how much truth you hear and try to absorb from the outside, it serves no good. Inwardly, something remaims locked. You are incapable of coming out of this confusion, of this trap.

Only recently I discussed this topic in a slightly different connection. I also discussed the point of relinquishing. Let us now apply both these topics to the freeing of the real self.

When you are helplessly trapped in a situation in which all available alternatives are dissatisfying, then you are in such a situation because your real self cannot manifest and therefore cannot guide you. The only way to free your real self sufficiently is to find your particular point of relinquishing, which must be hidden somewhere within the problem with which you are concerned. Once you find this point of rellinquishing, then gradually two different alternatives will evolve: one will be the adherence to a rigid principle, be it a general one or be it your own; the other is your own real self, seeing a way that may be imperfect at present, but you are willing to undertake this venture with all it entails.

I said it before, and I say it again now: This point of relinquishing cannot be found arbitrarily, nor by any intellectual process. It can be found only indirectly, by this work in self-search and with further help and assistance. Suddenly this point of relinquishing will come into sight, clearly and strongly. It may be something very subtle. It may not concern an outer or material giving up at all, but merely an attitude, an emotional gripping of something. But be aware of the fact that the peace, the strength, and the self-confidence deriving from selfhood can only be attained through the point of relinquishing.

So when you are gripped in the crisis of confusion, when you are trapped in helplessness, then you are bound to find that there is something you hold on to tightly, something which you think you must have. In other words, there is a strong need involved, either a real need, or a false need substituting for the real. When you find this point of relinquishing, then you will find that you sacrifice nothing by giving it up. On the contrary, you will see that you only give up an illusion, or a forcing current, or a false need -- something that you cannot have through inner forcing anyway. So you will not sacrifice, but you will have a wise and realistic attitude about it. You will understand that by not relinquishing, you trap yourself: you make yourself weak, dependent, helpless. Therefore, the true self cannot manifest. So far, the price that you have paid for holding on where you should have relinquished is tremendous. You forfeit peace, strength, and self-confidence. As a result, you make it impossible for you first to pursue and then to fulfill a real need for the doubtful benefit of holding on to an illusion: for example, to the desire to receive something for free. The unconscious resistance to relinquish is the strongest reason for inferiority, for self-contempt, for guilt, for weakness, for unfulfilled needs, for many outer frictions, and for many of the difficulties which are a final result of it.

Much of what I said here I have said in other connections before. But here I simply linked up a number of topics under discussion lately and showed you how you can utilize these various topics and make a whole out of it, provided your inner work brings you to this corresponding aspect within yourself.

Once you have come to this area within -- first through thinking about it, then by feeling it, and third by working it through -- then you can make an interesting experiment. Observe your past life from the point of view of where you are confused and dependent, and from the point of view of where you are free and at one with yourself. By observing the difference, you may find that when your real self was on the surface, then there was something that you relinquished. If you find it in the positive way, then this may make it easier for you to find it in the negative way. It may also make it easier to give up the resistance to relinquish because through your own experience you will see that it is something utterly good and favorable. It is reality, while the illusion only breeds conflict. By finding where your real self has manifested in the past, you will also see that it is not something far away and foreign. It is the familiar you in the best sense.

The question has arisen as to why the approach of these lectures recently has gone more and more into the psychological, rather than into the spiritual. I have given you various answers, reasons, and explanations. I should now like to direct your attention to the following factors. The area of your personality in which you are conflicted and immature -- what modern psychology terms neurotic -- in essence is what religion and spirituality term as sinful or evil. It is all the same. I explained to you why we have shied away from the crass term of sin. Your destructive guilt feelings on the one hand and your moralizing tendency and your idealized self image on the other make the terms sin and evil an even greater obstacle than any other obstacle you can possibly encounter on this Path. Your often strong tendencies toward self-punishment and self-destruction made it necessary to foster for the longest time a spirit of self-acceptance, of forgiveness, and of tolerance with yourself.

However, there comes a time in your work when it is necessary that you approach and face the afflicted area in you without kid gloves, so to speak. In other words, when you see it in its stark reality, without any diluting, without shying away from seeing what is there in its full impact. Where there are your distortions, your images, your repressions, and your immaturities -- in short, your neuroses -- there is also sin and evil. For neurosis always means a character defect. You have found, or are bound to see even more clearly, how the distortions -- the neuroses -- not only damage yourself, how they obstruct your own happiness, but how they are also are bound to do the same with others with whom you are involved and who are near you. In the so-called neurosis there is always selfishness, greed, pride, cowardice, egocentricity, and ruthlessness in one form or another.

If you view your actions, your reactions, and your attitudes emanating from your afflicted area and you consider their effect on others, apart from your own disadvantage, then you will truly gain a new perspective and you will see that it is possible to accept yourself and to forgive yourself while still knowing your intrinsic "sinfulness." You will no longer be forced to stand between the alternatives of either self-acceptance and self-indulgence, or repentance and self-hate. On one level of your being this is your dilemma. This, incidentally, is a typical example of one of those conflicts described before. You see these two alternatives and neither is constructive. This conflict may not be conscious, but it accounts for many resistances. Inwardly you are confused and you fluctuate between these two alternatives. Again and again you hear that you should learn to accept yourself, that you should learn to forgive yourself, that you should learn to like yourself in spite of your imperfections. But simultaneously you hear of the necessity of seeing yourself realistically so that your desire to change will grow. The desire to change can arise only out of true and genuine repentance. This is a strength and a courage which has, as a first step, to accept the blindness, to accept the ignorance, to accept the imperfections that still exist, but with the realization that all these are in essence character defects. In your confusion you see in each of the two alternatives -- self-acceptance and forgiveness versus the will to change -- a positive side and a negative side, and therefore you cannot reconcile the two. You are afraid of forgiving yourself because you fear your own craving for self-indulgence. You also fear to face fully that which is also harmful to others because you fear the whip of your own self-hate.

Once you can perceive that this alternative is an illusion and that it exists only because of your confusion, then two apparent opposites will become one whole. In other words, the two negatives will both fall off. They are split and they are attached to the split of a positive idea. Self-forgiveness and fully facing one's own sin both derive from courage, from humility, and from the will to take on self-responsibility. While self-indulgence and self-hate both derive from cowardice, from pride, from the will not to change but to make the world change, and from the lack of self-responsibility. Because of the split of both the positive trend and the negative trend, confusion is the result, in the same manner as the split of the original Whole Entity, with all of its confusion and darkness brought about by the Fall.

As long as you find yourself in a similar confusion, then your true self cannot show you the way. You tug on both sides, neither one leaving you satisfied. Therefore, your own impetus is impaired. You make up for this with compulsion -- "I must do the right thing" -- which you then project onto the world. You resent this. You struggle against it. You defy the world, while still wanting to find your own way. If by chance the way should appear similar to the way of the world -- to the way which the world demands -- then you are further hindered by your rebellion against the world. You have to prove that you do not bow down when, in reality, you would never do so anyway, whether or not your way is similar in manifestation to the world's prescription of it.

This rebellion has a positive aspect, too. It suffers from the same split as the concept of self-acceptance and the will to change. If you rebel against rigid principles, against perfectionism, and against conformism, then it is compatible with acceptance of the inevitable, with humility, and with healthy interdependence. On the other hand, appeasement, obedience, and dependence derive from the same greed as do childish rebellion and hostility. It is always the same: when a truth is split, then the consequence is that incompatible aspects appear on the horizon and create a confusion.

The two examples I just gave will show you how wrong the general idea is that a trend or a quality is, in itself, either good or bad. This holds true only in a very crass and superficial area, and only to a limited degree. On the whole, it is not true. Each trend or quality was originally -- before the split -- good and constructive. It becomes destructive the moment confusion and misconception arise, the moment one aspect of the trend is misused by the afflicted part of your soul. This, in combination with the general misconceptions existing in the world, increases the confusion in this respect.

This also results in a difficulty in communicating because one person thinks of the constructive side of the trend in question, while the other has the negative and destructive one in mind -- just as with rebellion or with repentance or with self-acceptance. One person may think of the healthy rebellion indicated earlier -- of the strength and maturity in real repentance and change; of the humility and realism of accepting oneself as one is. Another person thinks of the destructive kind of rebellion, with its false strength, its defiance, and its cruelty; of the unhealthy guilt and the self-accusation in false repentance; of the self-indulgence in self-acceptance. These are examples, but you can find the same in any good or bad aspect or trait in existence. This confusion leads to misunderstanding among people, but, most important of all, to confusion and to conflict within the self. And these, in turn, make it all the more difficult either not to conform to fixed rules or to rebel against everything that is constructive, as well as what is actually wrong in this world. This kind of rebellion can do nothing to change it, for to do so, you first have to change yourself.

Every trend or quality in existence experiences this two-foldedness. Even an unquestionable quality like love, the most potent force in the universe, is often misunderstood, and is therefore rejected, because it is taken in its distorted form of false sacrifice, of possessive domineering, of greedy craving, and of dependency.

Let us take another quality, charity. There are many aspects to it: the charity of the spirit, manifesting in tolerance and understanding; the charity of giving material things; the charity of feeling with and for another person, termed compassion. Let us consider the aspect of compassion. As it happens, in the English language you actually have another name designating the negative aspect of it, and that is pity. But you do not have it in all languages. In the English language this happens to be the case in this respect, but for many other trends or qualities only one term exists, so that confusion is more apt to exist. But even when two terms are available, then it is still easy to be confused as to which is which. How often does it happen that a person really feels pity while he is convinced that he has compassion. It is always tempting to pride oneself with a positive attitude, thus covering up a negative one.

Why is pity destructive? Apart from the obvious, it is also destructive because it paralyzes you. In compassion you are strong and capable of helping, of doing something for the other person. In pity you can do nothing but you merely weep for the other, while in reality you weep for yourself due to your unwillingness to accept life and death; to take responsibility upon yourself, which makes you capable of coping with life's hardships. In pity, you merely project your own weakness onto another: your own cowardice and your own hidden rebellion. Therefore, pity it is an utterly selfish emotion.

The way to determine whether you feel compassion or pity is to see whether the feeling gives you strength for the other person or persons involved, or whether it weakens you. If it weakens you, then you know the procedure of looking beyond it and seeing what you can find. Where do you hold a misconception? Where are you trapped in confusion? Where do you repress? Compassion makes you feel and understand, but it is strong enough not to paralyze you. It makes it possible for you to help if need be, and if it be for the good of the other person, even with a momentarily bitter medicine.

In the future you will come across other trends that confuse you because of a split in the concept. If you have sufficient awareness of your confusions and your conflicts, then this will appear on the surface. Before the confusion is cleared up, you will already feel a liberation because then you are fully aware of the problem and you see it. At such times, I shall be happy to clarify such confused, split concepts in the manner I have done here.

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QUESTION: I always felt guilty because I didn't have real pity for my mother. I had compassion for her, and because of that I was able to help her. If I had had pity, then it would hve been impossible to help her. But in spite of that, and in spite of knowing it, I feel guilty.

ANSWER: But you do not have the guilt, as you put it, because you did not have real pity. Your guilt has nothing to do with pity or compassion. It has to do with entirely different aspects where there was no healthy approach in yourself, and towards your mother. As I told you already in the past, your guilt has nothing to do with your relationship to her. It is an indirect outcome of other aspects wihin yourself.

QUESTION: With regard to what you said before, I'm just about to lose my closest friend. I would like to be able to get to the point of having compassion and to lose any kind of pity.

ANSWER: The answer is implicit in this lecture. Find where you identify with this friend. What the friend experiences, you fear for yourself. This fear is repressed, and therefore cannot be dealt with and come to terms with. Thus, it manifests in pity.

QUESTION: It is more the loss I feel than identification.

ANSWER: It is also identification. The grief of losing a dear one is a pain that has to be borne. In itself, it is a healthy pain that cannot weaken the soul, provided it is gone through. But the additonal element in your pain is fear. And where there is fear, identification occurs. The quality of these two pains is different if you probe your emotions. The quality of the pain of loss does not contain the fear, the bitterness, the self-pity, the struggle, and the hardness contained in the pain of identification, namely pity.

QUESTION: In the last lecture, with reference to the defense mechanism, you said that the basic defense is a general inner climate that you can feel. Could you please explain what you meant by "inner climate"?

ANSWER: If you observe your emotions, which you increasingly learn to do on this Path, then you will detect the kind of feeling that can best be described as an inner stiffening. It may not be always on the surface. There has to be a reason or a provocation for it; for instance, when you do this work with another person and certain areas are touched, or when you encounter, or are apprehensive about, criticism or disapproval. You will detect a hardening, a fearfulness, an apprehension, a desire to reject whatever it is that comes to you. You feel attacked and threatened. The feeling in you, coming as a reaction to the elements just mentioned, is your defense mechanism. Once you feel it, it is a great step forward, for then you will come to see how you react due to its existence in you, and how such a reaction is against your interest. You have to observe this inner climate, this stiffening, this hardening, for otherwise you cannot get any further in this important respect of the work.

QUESTION: You didn't exactly define pity and compassion, as I remember. I would like to know a little what the difference is betwen the two. It seems to me that in the work you prescribe, the more we acknowledge and understand ourselves, the more we are able to act according to a rule, that is, to live together. Apart from that, the more we do this work, the more do we become less human and more like machines. I believe the very core of humanity is piry, and indeed self-pity, because if a person does not have self-pity, then he is not selfish. If a person is not selfish, then he is not human, he is a God. This is not a mental or intellectual consideration, but something I feel.

ANSWER: In the first place, I do not think it is necessary to repeat now the difference between compassion and pity. I have defined it sufficiently in the lecture. If you read it, I do not believe you will have any difficulty in understanding. However, if a question remains open, I shall be glad to answer it after you have studied the lecture.

As to the rest of your question, there are a number of confusions and misunderstandings contained in it. For instance, you say that at the core of every human being there is pity, indeed self-pity. This is not true. Either pity or self-pity is the result, or the symptom, not even of the core but of another symptom. There are many attitudes and aspects in the human being that are a part of a chain reaction. The core is the real self. And this most certainly does not act according to any rule, neither a general outer one nor a rigid self-made rule. Its nature is flexibility and individuality.

Although it is human to be selfish, it is also human to be unselfish. Although it is human to have self-pity, it is also human not to hate it. It is not that the one is human and the other is divine. Both are human. With selfishness it is the same as with any other trait: there is a healthy as well as an unhealthy, and therefore destructive, kind. Your confusion here arises out of the ignorance in this respect in that you believe that you are expected to give up every kind of selfishness that is destructive both of yourself and of others.

Moreover, I should like to say that if you believe that the outcome of this work is (a) conforming to a rule and (b) to become like a machine, then you have not even understood the most basic rudiments of this work. It is time for you, with your good intelligence, to understand it, at least in your brain. For the truth is the very opposite of what you stated here. It is significant, and it applies to every human being regardless of his intelligence, that where he has a resistance to understand he not only does not hear the points that he is unwilling to understand, but he actually hears its very opposite. The essence of these lectures, of these teachings, and the method of this work is to free you of the ready-made rules and to become true individuals. In this lecture this point was stresed from a new angle.

You are under the misconception that goodness is dull, that it has no variation, that it is always the same insipid lack of individuality, of humor, of pleasure, and of wit. You ascribe all these qualities to badness. How wrong you are! Goodness is just as diversified as badness. Only it has more humor, more individuality, and more pleasure because in health and maturity -- which amounts to the same as "goodness" -- you have a deeper and wider scope for living. You confuse goodness with goody-goodness which, if really analyzed, is just another facet of the very badness that seems so desirable to you.

In this lecture I mentioned, among other things, that sometimes it is better to make a mistake, provided it comes out of yourself, than to obey rules and principles when you are not at one within yourself about them. Isn't it significant that you hear the very opposite? Doesn't that show something very vital in your attitude toward yourself? Do you understand, my friend?

QUESTION: Yes, I understand your words. But what you say then becomes a rule if you say that I, or we, or mankind "must" aim to become oneself. Then this is a rule.

ANSWER: No. You can choose to remain infants if you so desire. You do not have to grow up. But if you wish to grow and to live a constructive and full life, and if you want to realize most of your potentials, then you must become yourself. But the choice has to be made by you.

QUESTION: I understand. Then there is a further question. Why should such advanced people, shall we say